


like a plucked string

by oogenesis



Category: Elsword (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 04:11:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 657
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17379302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oogenesis/pseuds/oogenesis
Summary: Sometimes the timelines resonate with each other.





	like a plucked string

**Author's Note:**

> i have never played elsword in my life i just love ain so much (all three of him) also i wrote this in like 15 minutes

Richter is on the trail again, divine justice like a thunderbolt in his hand. Godlike, he travels through time and space, the world rippling around him to realign itself with his purpose; an arrow loosed from the bow. Grim, white-lightning intent crackles in his wake. There are seven hundred twenty thousand four hundred and thirty six sinning souls in need of correction that he can sense right now, and in two minutes there will be seven hundred twenty thousand four hundred and thirty five—

Laughter bubbles up in his throat.

Richter stops. The laughter stops at his mouth and won’t go farther, but presses there, insistent. There is a strange lightness in his chest. Weighted though he is with divine intent, he feels as though it could lift him up and float him away. The urge to laugh, to fling out his arms and spin around, to see who’s there and call out hello. Stopping his flight through time and space has left him on a meadow overlooking a cliff; there are wildflowers dotting the grass. Wildflowers! Isn’t it pretty? Isn’t it wonderful?

What in the name of the Goddess is going on?

The breeze tugs at Richter’s hair, playful while he stands stock still in astonishment.

Two seconds and five hundred sixty one milliseconds pass before he moves again. A ripple in space, and the divine arrow is shooting off again, deadly and inexorable towards its target, unshakeable. But perhaps a little shaken.

…

Evening in amber and lilac tones, Bluhen walking down the street, past the lanterns fixed to the sides of buildings just starting to come on in the gathering dusk. He’s swinging his pendulum absently, letting the weight of it carry it in an arc, and humming fragments of a tune he thinks he heard yesterday, and thinking about the meal he just had. Food is so fun. Bodies are so fun, to be able to experience something like cuisine. He should really—

The bottom drops out of the world and there is the sensation of something being ripped out of his chest. The pendulum’s arc jerks, skips, goes two ways for a moment; a terrible terrible emptiness is filling up Bluhen’s mind. Emptiness like the rotten brine of deep sea, an awful lip-curling emptiness. And at the bottom of it, a horrible, horrible despair, like the flowers in the window-boxes drooping and decaying, like the lanterns going out along the street, here comes the dark—

—and it’s gone. Bluhen is standing on a gentle evening street, a touch winded, his head buzzing. The air is buzzing. Ripples that fade. The lanterns are lit and the flowers are blooming.

He stands there for a moment.

Life, he thinks, is full of little reminders to be grateful for what you have.

He keeps on walking.

…

At the bottom of the deep, deep sea, no light penetrates; pale and ugly things grow in the dark, in the immense pressure, in the unimaginable cold, crawling across the ocean floor with no knowledge of the world miles above.

It is a little like this.

The being called Herrscher sits and thinks of nothing and everything, as usual, and finds nothing and everything to be somewhat distasteful topics, as usual, and sits and floats and thinks about those things a little more, because there is nothing else to do, waiting for the lost ones to trickle in, as they always do…

Ah.

Something feels a little strange in his ears.

A thunderbolt, a beam of light like a sword, pierces the darkness in the Void—the darkness behind his eyes—a flaring like great wings unfolding. A sense of clarity. A sense of purpose. Righteousness and justice and unwavering dedication, power like a great shining spring, pointed like an arrow at a sure and certain target, a great and awesome _intent_ —

The curtains of dark fall back down.

Slow ghost starbursts like the afterimage of light on dazzled pupils.

**Author's Note:**

> comments highly appreciated thank you


End file.
